I can't heal your pain but I can see it. And you don't have to be lost. Not forever.

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.

In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.

I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.

Horror is the badge of humanity, worn proudly, self-righteously, and often falsely.

With the first kiss his mouth will taste of wormwood.

My mother is an office manager, my father a professor of economics and financial planner.